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09 July 2016

Let It Go Flow

Earlier this week, I had the great, great fortune to pass through Austin on a day when the yoga instructor I have been following online was teaching a class. It was an even greater fortune because this was a class that she normally did not teach. The live class was amazing. I love going to classes and feeding off of the energy of others. Adriene had been traveling quite a lot and finally came home, so her theme for that class was "home." That really fit perfectly with me since I was on my way home.

Her theme got me thinking about all of the different manifestations of home. Some homes are physical places--the home of my parents that I grew up in, the home of my grandparents that holds so many happy memories, and the home that Steve and I have created. All of those are wonderful places. But "home," I think, can be manifested in a person. That absolute feeling of safety and surrender and love that you can get from be near, let alone embraced by, a person.

I left the yoga studio with a renewed sense of gratitude for my relationship with Steve and the physical home that we have made.

Since that day, I have made an effort to do a little yoga each day, something that I hope to continue. Fortunately, Adriene has a ton of videos available online or through her subscription service, so you could do a different video each day for several months without repeating any. I like to just scroll through her videos until one pops out at me.

This morning, the Let It Go Flow video got my attention. It was a 20 minute video, which is really a perfect amount of time for me for an at-home practice (I really struggle to stay motivated to do a longer practice by myself). Not that I have a lot of crap going on in my life, but there are some things that I wish I could change. Or barring that, some things that I can't change, but I know could change my feelings and attitude towards--that's the thing you have to remember, you can really only change yourself most of the time. Sometimes you're lucky enough to be able to change circumstances.

Anyway, the sequence of this video was fantastic. But it was also the words that Adriene said that helped me and have inspired me.

"See the truth, speak the truth, feel the truth."
AKA--the three parts of the namaste. I always knew that you put your hands at your forehead, mouth, and heart during namaste, but I never knew the three parts, so that was good. Kind of a way of accepting and letting it go.

"In namaste, we acknowledge the best version of ourselves and in others too."
I knew this one beforehand, but it was nice to have it reiterated. Acknowledging the best in others is really a big part of letting it go. Most people have some redeeming quality and the challenge is to see that and focus on the good.

"Everything is as it should be."
I'm not the grand puppeteer in charge of the whole world or even my world. Whatever has happened, has happened for a reason and that is beyond my control. I need to let it go and accept that it is what it is.

"The universe is for me and so is everything else."
This one is a positive attitude/outlook kind of thing. When things don't go my way or aren't as I like, there isn't some big conspiracy to keep me from being happy. There is some lesson, most likely patience, that I should be learning from the situation. The better I can accept it and let it go, the more peaceful I will feel.

Like I said, there are things about my life that I wish I could change. But I just can't make some things go away. So I have to learn to let it go. I think I'll be doing this video fairly frequently until I get to that point. Today, however, was a big step.